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Portfolio: This shows the number of portfolios you hold. Portfolios can be constructed from Unit Trusts & OEICs,IMA Unit Trusts & OEICs,Investment Trusts,Pension Funds,Life Funds,Offshore Funds,Exchange Traded Funds and cash. Holdings and acquisition costs can be recorded so that profits/losses can be calculated. These can be calculated in terms of a number of base currencies. Overall portfolio values, as well as portfolio constituents, can be made the subject of alerts.
Watchlist: You have one watchlist, and this shows you the number of items currently stored in the watchlist. Items stored here do not have holdings records, so this list simply monitors the price of items held, which can also be subject to alerts
Funds Basket: This is designed to be a temporary collection of items selected by you for further analysis in the tools section. Items can be subsequently transferred from the Basket to the Watchlist or Portfolio.
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Standard deviation is a statistical measurement which, when applied to an investment fund, expresses its volatility, or risk. It shows how widely a range of returns varied from the fund's average return over a particular period. Low volatility reduces the risk of buying into an investment in the upper range of its deviation cycle, then seeing its value head towards the lower extreme. For example, if a fund had an average return of 5%, and its volatility was 15, this would mean that the range of its returns over the period had swung between +20% and -10%. Another fund with the same average return and 5% volatility would return between 10% and nothing, but there would at least be no loss. While volatility is specific to a fund's particular mix of investments, and comparison to other portfolios is difficult, clearly, for those that offer similar returns, the lower-volatility funds are preferable. There is no point in taking on higher risk than necessary in order to achieve the same reward.
Worked Example: Volatility The average return of a fund conceals periodic fluctuations above and below the mean. The greater these fluctuations, the greater the risk that an investor could buy into a fund at a high point and subsequently dispose of the holding at a time when the fund hits a low. Volatility measure the extent to which the fund varies either side of the average, and hence this risk of loss. In the following table a selection of performance measures is listed for two funds and their benchmark.
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